Strange ideas about Fulham since 2006

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Well the season is long in the books, and Rich has been doing some wonderful analysis so far. I just wanted to add the final data dump of the season so we can look back, laugh, cry, and whatever else we so desire.

MATCHDAYS

SHOTS FOR

SHOTS AGAINST

CORSI/TSR

SOT TOTAL

SOT AGAINST TOTAL

Week 5

77

65

0.542

18

24

Week 10

133

125

0.516

44

44

Week 15

194

206

0.485

68

65

Week 20

272

282

0.491

92

94

Week 25

324

372

0.466

106

118

Week 30

380

470

0.447

127

151

Week 35

451

538

0.456

143

177

Week 40

533

632

0.458

167

220

Week 46

601

712

0.458

193

246

MATCHDAYS

SOT SHARE

SHOOTING % FOR

SAVE %

PDO

Week 5

0.429

16.66

58.33

74.99

Week 10

0.5

27.27

54.55

81.82

Week 15

0.511

32.36

56.91

89.27

Week 20

0.495

32.61

58.51

91.12

Week 25

0.473

33.01

62.71

95.73

Week 30

0.457

33.85

64.91

98.76

Week 35

0.447

32.15

66.66

98.82

Week 40

0.432

30.54

67.27

97.81

Week 46

0.44

32.12

66.26

98.38

This last set contains 6 matches instead of 5, so the numbers may be skewed ever so slightly. But considering it’s the end of the season and we all know the story about the club, let’s at least look at each match individually:

Opponent

Fulham Shots

Fulham SoT

Opp Shots

Opp SoT

Charlton

13

6

8

1

Wigan

14

3

8

3

Rotherham

13

3

12

5

Blackpool

6

2

17

3

Boro

14

8

17

6

Norwich

8

4

19

8

Despite netting 9 points from these 6 matches, Fulham were outshot on target in all but 2: against Charlton, one of the worst shooting teams, and Boro, who were down to 10 men for 20mins (and they almost won that match). ‘Tis a funny game sometimes.

Now if we graph SOT Share, PDO, and TSR a few things stand out. First, our PDO under Kit impressively hovered in the mid to upper 90s for most of his reign. That basically means our table position was correct all along. Second, the Shots On Target Share increased in the final set after dipping consistently since November.

Finally, look at that TSR. Remember all the writings about our horrible defense? Well that’s why Fulham’s TSR was so atrocious, having a final ranking of 20th overall. Although it was actually quite high under Magath, it declined all season long despite flatlining a bit the last 10 matches of the season. The teams with a lower TSR all had higher PDOs, except for Blackpool who were the worst ever, meaning that we were really bad AND finished exactly where we deserved (unlike 12th placed Charlton who had the league lowest TSR).

If we sort all the stats for the entire Championship by Largest to Smallest/Most to Least, you’ll see Fulham posting some not-so-pretty numbers:

Statistic

Final Ranking

SHOTS FOR

15

SHOTS AGAINST

5

CORSI/TSR

20

SOT TOTAL

14

SOT AGAINST TOTAL

1

SOT SHARE

21

SHOOTING % FOR

9

SAVE %

19

PDO

17

I could probably spill more ink going into all this, but at this point … what’s the point? Fulham survived with an 11pt gap, the same difference between a top 10 finish. Changes should be coming in the summer. Kit seems like he may be sticking around, but who knows.

Jesus H Blackpool is but 1 point away from setting an all-time low record for points and yet:

Blackpool. Shot. Nearly. Twenty. Times.

This (tragic) dumpster fire of a club is 22nd in total shots for and, thankfully for Fulham, 23rd in shots on target for. Their Shooting %, despite somehow better than Rotherham, is 22nd but not even 24% (i.e. only 1 of their 4 shots on target go in the net.)

As of last month, they barely had 130 DZ shots total in about 40 games. On Saturday they got 5.

And Fulham set out a fairly defensive lineup.

Which may explain whey they had six total shots. Against an opponent that is DEAD LAST in total shots AND shots on target against (Spoiler alert: Fulham also had two shots on target. TWO. But hey, 50% Shooting Percentage!)

Oh and looks like Fulham’s second leading scorer and shot taker was left on the bench, again.

Statistically speaking, this may match may have crossed the rubicon for me. There’s no tenable reason to keep Kit as manager after the Norwich match. The defense is bad, the offense is petering, results are being achieved when they shouldn’t be, and the team selection is confounding.

Any of those in isolation would be acceptable. Two of four? Eeeeep. All Four? Toodle-oo.

Woah hey maybe it’s time for Hugo Rodallega to get some more minutes? The fella hasn’t started in last 7 games, and although his performances right before his benching were quite bad, our offense isn’t getting that much better without him.

Here are some shot figures, in a table (filtered so no less than 5 shots) and bar (no less than 3 shots) format.

You see Hugo is still our #2 shooter by an absurdly wide margin, despite being benched for the past month and a half.

Things can’t get much worse (okay yes they can) than reintroduce Hugo (and possibly give Kaca more minutes). As of yesterday our Shooting Percentage was 30.69. In the past 8 games where Hugo has barely featured, the Shooting% is 31.37. That’s not a great increase.

But rather than diversify our offense, his absence has resulted in Ross just shooting from distance, by himself, a lot.

About this time last year I wrote about Fulham’s terrible defense, honing in on how many shots in the “Danger Zone” they were conceding.

A refresher: not all shots are created equal, and thus attempting or conceding shots closer to the net is easier for your/their offense to score. Shots further away are more difficult to score. Shots conceded in Zones 1-3 are dubbed the “Danger Zone”. You want to shoot there. You dont want to concede shots there.

Well guess what, that’s where Fulham concede a metric shitload of shots!

Note part 1: this data is dated March 20, so it’s slightly out of date, but more importantly it’s courtesy of Ben’s wonderful Stats and Snakeoil Blog. (Thanks Ben!)

Note part 2: I took Ben’s data, and modified it to fit the provided shot locations with Michael Caley’s Shot Matrix zone map. Apologies if I violated a few scientific laws; I’m only a dilettante. Full data can be seen here.

Team

Shots For

DZ Shots For

DZ For %

Birmingham City

479

143

29.9%

Blackburn Rovers

548

243

44.3%

Blackpool

396

129

32.6%

Bolton Wanderers

454

186

41.0%

Bournemouth

593

226

38.1%

Brentford

530

188

35.5%

Brighton and Hove Albion

541

207

38.3%

Cardiff City

449

179

39.9%

Charlton Athletic

377

135

35.8%

Derby County

486

179

36.8%

Fulham

468

161

34.4%

Huddersfield Town

521

176

33.8%

Ipswich Town

536

259

48.3%

Leeds United

406

116

28.6%

Middlesbrough

545

216

39.6%

Millwall

467

159

34.0%

Norwich City

583

204

35.0%

Nottingham Forest

531

217

40.9%

Reading

465

185

39.8%

Rotherham United

496

200

40.3%

Sheffield Wednesday

483

193

40.0%

Watford

521

189

36.3%

Wigan Athletic

439

152

34.6%

Wolverhampton Wanderers

472

175

37.1%

Team

Shots Against

DZ Shots Against

DZ Against %

Birmingham City

569

224

39.4%

Blackburn Rovers

494

195

39.5%

Blackpool

607

218

35.9%

Bolton Wanderers

551

199

36.1%

Bournemouth

435

151

34.7%

Brentford

518

184

35.5%

Brighton and Hove Albion

456

180

39.5%

Cardiff City

500

169

33.8%

Charlton Athletic

560

201

35.9%

Derby County

454

164

36.1%

Fulham

558

234

41.9%

Huddersfield Town

516

192

37.2%

Ipswich Town

475

191

40.2%

Leeds United

554

204

36.8%

Middlesbrough

399

157

39.3%

Millwall

479

192

40.1%

Norwich City

354

122

34.5%

Nottingham Forest

482

160

33.2%

Reading

460

179

38.9%

Rotherham United

503

205

40.8%

Sheffield Wednesday

440

180

40.9%

Watford

510

187

36.7%

Wigan Athletic

423

152

35.9%

Wolverhampton Wanderers

489

177

36.2%

Team

DZR

DZ Shots +/-

Birmingham City

0.390

-81

Blackburn Rovers

0.555

48

Blackpool

0.372

-89

Bolton Wanderers

0.483

-13

Bournemouth

0.599

75

Brentford

0.505

4

Brighton and Hove Albion

0.535

27

Cardiff City

0.514

10

Charlton Athletic

0.402

-66

Derby County

0.522

15

Fulham

0.408

-73

Huddersfield Town

0.478

-16

Ipswich Town

0.576

68

Leeds United

0.363

-88

Middlesbrough

0.579

59

Millwall

0.453

-33

Norwich City

0.626

82

Nottingham Forest

0.576

57

Reading

0.508

6

Rotherham United

0.494

-5

Sheffield Wednesday

0.517

13

Watford

0.503

2

Wigan Athletic

0.500

0

Wolverhampton Wanderers

0.497

-2

There’s a lot of data, but for this post we’re only going to look at the second table. If you were to sort it by the DZ Shots Against metric you’d see that Fulham have actually conceded the most shots in the Danger Zone in the entire Championship (and on par to eclipse last season)!.

Additionally, whereas just 34% of our shots taken are from the Danger Zone, about 42% of our shots conceded is from the Danger Zone. So nearly half of all shots our opponents are taking are almost from point-blank. As of now there’s not a way to deduct DZ Shots on Target from the overall DZ Shots Against, but regardless that statistic is damning.

In a few hours Fulham travel to Charlton, who boast the worst shot totals, nearly worst DZ Shot totals, 6th worst DZ Shots Against totals, and a worst DZ Ratio than us. Should be a terrible, terrible game.

Whereas matches 30-35 were all against top 10 opponents, this set was against mid-table oppositions (Bournemouth aside) and was to better show the club’s true standing. And no it’s not great.

But, dig a little deeper. Huddersfield was clearly a statistical outlier (and played with 10 men) and Bournemouth are the best team in the league (and also played with 10 men). The numbers otherwise are quite even if not slightly skewing in our favor. So why the terrible results?

What the Huddersfield and Leeds game show is Variance 101: nine out of ten times Fulham beat Leeds handily, and nine out of ten times Fulham lose to Huddersfield.

Not to mention on another day Fulham might have at least nicked a point from Brentford. The numbers from that, and the Leeds match too, are much more promising than the Bournemouth massacre or the Huddersfield miracle.

Yet that’s why they play the game and we watch. Luck sometimes can even out. No, we’re not a good team by any stretch. But the numbers are showing we’re also not as bad as we may currently seem.

So now, back to data-land, if we stack the difference between SoT and SoTA in each preceding week, we see SoT is keeping pace whereas SoTA is worrisome.

Regardless, this is having a major impact on our SoT Share, as seen nose-diving below:

Oy vey. Fulham have almost come full circle from where they were under Magath.

Perhaps Bryan Ruiz staying is a blessing in disguise, and Matt Smith returning at the end of the month might be the catalyst Fulham need, because currently they are extremely over-reliant on two players, and two players alone:

In December I (timmy not rich) wrote about how Fulham were doing quite well under new manager Kit Symons. Naturally, things regressed almost immediately. Sorry.

The playoffs, which at the time seemed within reach but required the amazing run to continue, are gone. Relegation looks closer in comparison. Reality is midtable mediocrity.

Seven games have passed since my last post, which has allowed us to really analyze Kit’s reign as there are over four five-game blocks. And when collecting data on matches, five game blocks seem to offer the best sample size.

So as you can see we’re getting outshot significantly, something that doomed us last season when we had 5 managers and the likes of John Arne Riise in the squad (yet, at this point last season Fulham’s TSR was .371. It somehow wasn’t the worst in the EPL, yet, would be far, far worse than current Championship bottom-dwellers Blackpool. Shows how even this league can be…).

Although not dropping at worrying rates, regardless this is not a good omen and something that needs to be addressed in the coming games. I’m a bit unsure if it’s because our offense has seemingly dried up (more on that next), or if our defense is the liability. I defer to other more intelligent folks on that one.

Now onto our Shooting Percentage, which you can see has totally flat-lined since Matchday 16 (that 2-2 draw with Blackpool in early November).

A nugget of data I found interesting but did not post above is that our passing percentage is actually higher than our opponents in most games; we’re just not doing enough with our shot selection and quality. I need to watch some game tape to determine this, but happy to hear what others think.

Yet despite all this Fulham’s PDO is currently at 98.92 (100 is league average), and has dipped and risen within a few percentage points since Matchday 16. This means were aren’t terribly lucky, but also aren’t terribly unlucky. So we’re about where we should be (look at teams like Derby who have extremely high, or Brighton with extremely low, PDO. Their other numbers are a-okay, which mean their respective fortunes are bound to change soon).

Holistically, what are we to make of all this? My theory is that we’re a horribly unbalanced side and Kit is just a four months into a major rebuild. It may explain the very manic-depressive graph that the great Ben of @stats_snakeoil provided the other day:

Here we see the massive uptick once Magath was fired, followed by a gradual decline that has seen intermittent spikes. It will be fascinating to see if this keeps up for the remaining 15 games.

Speaking of, Fulham will need to somehow play worse (always possible!) in order to get relegated.

Despite the horrid results and performances of late, Fulham are still grinding out results when they need to. Take the total point haul over each matchday set:

Point Haul

Matchdays 1-5

1

Matchdays 6-10

6

Matchdays 11-15

8

Matchdays 16-20

7

Matchdays 21-25

6

Matchdays 26-30

7

35

For every five games Fulham are gaining about 5.83333 points (or, 1.16 PpG). If you add that average to their current total of 35, they’ll end up with about 53.66 points. In the past 5 seasons, 53 points would place you (in descending order): 16, 22, 18, 19, 20. We are currently 18th.

To allay any fears, the teams relegated in 2012-13 each had 54, 51, 41 points. Current relegation places have: 30, 22, 20. Yes miracles do happen, but I don’t see either Millwall, Wigan, or Blackpool earning anywhere from 20 to 30 points over the next 16 games (and read this about Millwall: https://statsandsnakeoil.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/visualising-the-championship-historical-context-charts/) to match the tallies of the 2012-13 season. But that doesn’t mean Fulham aren’t in for a rough ride if they don’t address the things I wrote about above.

“While Fulham’s underlying numbers have remained fairly constant, it took a while for their results to catch up. Moreover, the rate at which their GR caught up with their TSR perhaps suggests that the rate at which they have accumulated points since game 10 is also slightly misleading; I would suggest that they are unlikely to continue to rack up points at near title pace throughout the rest of the season and are instead more likely to end up solidly mid-table.”

Feel free to speculate why this is all happening in the comments below. If I am totally misinterpreting the stats, please let me know.

It’s probably not a coincidence this website hasn’t been updated since: “Kit Symons: the right appointment”.

In all seriousness, what else needs to be said?

Fulham find themselves comfortably (as comfortable as one can be in the Championship) mid-table: almost away from the relegation quagmire, almost within touching distance of the playoffs. Yet Kit’s 15 games in charge is more than each of last year’s 3 managers.

Fortunes could continue improving or regress, so why not investigate the club’s fortunes under Kit’s reign to date and look at some fancy numbers (courtesy of Owain Thomas)

When Kit took over on September 18, Fulham were 24th with just 1 point, 0-1-6, a -12GD, and scored 6 goals in 7 games.

The club’s TSR (Total Shots Ratio; often has strong correlation to points and goal difference) was .503, which despite the terrible record was good enough for 13th overall (context: last season in the EPL Fulham had an awful TSR with .392). Yet their PDO (go here) and Save% were both atrocious, a league-worse 72.2 PDO (100 is the mean) and 49.98 Sv%.

In layman terms, and within the statistical prism, Fulham were not getting horribly outplayed and outshot under Magath (as they were a year prior under Jol). They were simply terribly coached from a tactical standpoint.

Attributing Sv% is tricky, but in my opinion conceding 18 goals in 7 games and having a Sv% under 50% basically means that our opponents had time to “pick their spots” per se. Just take this: in Felix’s final game, Nottingham Forest scored its first 5 goals via their first 5 shots on target. That’s not just absurd, it’s an indictment of the defense.

As of last week, sans the Sheffield Wednesday game, Fulham posted a slightly decreased 0.485 TSR; but saw improvements in their PDO and Sv%: 92.09 and 59.79 respectively. [Update: as of 12/23 TSR: 0.482; PDO: 94.94 and Sv%: 60.61%]

Translation: the team is about the same in terms of overall shots for/against but has shored up the defense immensely.

Which has then translated to Fulham’s current standing of 13th with 28 points, 8-4-10, -4 GD and 35 goals in 22 games.

Overall Kit as posted a 8-3-4 record in his 15 games as caretaker and official manager of the club. This equates to an amazing 1.8 PpG, which is better than all but 3 teams entire season’s PpG to date. Further context: Magath posted a .142 PpG in the Championship. (Yes, that’s a decimal before the 1.)

If Fulham can maintain this streak over their remaining 24 games, they should end up with about 71 points; not a sure thing for the playoffs but certainly within touching distance.

Kit has also settled on an established 11, with a majority of the subs coming in defense due to the numerous amounts of injuries there. Whereas Magath was making an average of 3+ changes per game, Symons is making a just a hair over 2 per game (and just exactly 2 per game in last 5 games; with a defender involved in 3 of the 5 games).

Intriguingly, the likes of Woodrow, Roberts, David, Hyndman, and Eisfeld, aka the promising youngsters that were the only panacea to Magath’s reign, have barely featured under Symons. Roberts’ late substitute appearance last week was his first action since November 5. Woodrow scored a goal last week from the penalty spot, but hasn’t started since late October and logged just 54 minutes total since then (about 10mins per appearance). David has made the bench once under Kit.

Conversely the reintroductions of Hugo, Burn, and Ruiz have come to define Kit’s stint as repairing the damage done by Magath (and to some extent Rene and Jol).

But if there is one feather to Kit’s cap, it surely must be the emergence of Lasse Vigen Christensen, who has started all 15 matches under Kit and scored 5 times—as many as Ross McCormack.

Kit’s tenure has been thrilling. We should look back and really enjoy what he’s done, and hope it can continue.

A few pieces come to mind when thinking of Magath. The fact they’re about American football and their titles and the specifics don’t really matter as much as their essence.

Piece #1, from a former football player who spent one week at a certain team with a hated coach:

The psychology goes like this: Players used to love the game. They enjoyed their talent and had high self-esteem. If a coach comes along who makes them feel insecure and paranoid, they begin to hate the game. Then they begin to hate the man who made them hate the game. When they hate the man, they hate his agenda. His agenda, in this case, is an impersonal obsession with winning a football game, with (the perception is) little respect for the players who are doing the winning. The result: a player who doesn’t care whether his team wins or loses. And it happens constantly.

The good coaches are malleable, open-minded, humble. The good coaches make it feel like it’s our team, not his team. The good coaches understand that there is a fine line between being prepared and being confounded. The good coaches adjust their approach when they see 53 grown men ready to cry on a daily basis. These are the best athletes in the world. You don’t have to run them into the ground and call them pussies. You simply have to turn them loose. Sure, you must do so intelligently, with the opposing team’s strengths and weaknesses in mind. But you can’t project your own pedantic, inactive analysis of the game onto the athletes who actually have todo it.

In the 21st century, NFL players are smart enough to distinguish between actual discipline (having a well-structured operation) and the bullshit old-school disciplinarian discipline. They know that a guy like Schiano is being a hardass because a) he gets off on it and b) he doesn’t really know what the fuck he’s doing. If you know what you’re doing, you usually don’t have to be a cock. If you haven’t, read former NFL tight end Nate Jackson’s account of Eric Mangini’s reign of terror in Cleveland for a good idea of just how far these nutjobs can take it.

Study after study has proven there are many good substitutes for Schiano’s redassed brand of leadership, and that it should be phased out of all aspects of American society entirely—in coaching, parenting, teaching, business management, etc. And now most NFL teams are doing just that. You can’t separate head coaches into “player’s coaches” and “disciplinarians” the way you used to. A good NFL head coach wins his players’ confidence by being detailed and having an answer for everything, not by being some stern daddy figure who demands you fight for his grudging approval. He doesn’t demand discipline. He inspires it.

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Roy Hodgson: A football life (LAST COUPLE OF PAPERBACKS! WHEN THEY’RE GONE, THEY’RE GONE)

If you like the website, you might like my latest book. It's a full biography of Roy Hodgson's football career, featuring lots you won't already know. All purchases hugely appreciated!

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Paperback: www.godsfoot.com

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Reviews

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Reviews

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